A video in which a hand-painted Max Beckmann walks through his collection of postcards, occasionally changing outfits or morphing into different objects. The hummed song to which he walks is the well-known German nursery song Hänschen Klein (Little Hans, 1899, by Franz Widedemann) which tells of a boy who leaves his sorrowing mother to go out into the world with only his hat and stick, eventually returning as an almost unrecognizable man. The postcards in the background are arranged in chronological order starting with his sojourn in Flanders during World War I and ending with New York, where he died.

Commissioned for Max Beckmann: Departure at the Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich, Germany, November 25 – March 12, 2023.